Center Leadership

Alfonso López de la Osa Escribano is Director of the Center of U.S. and Mexican Law (US-MEX LAW) at the University of Houston Law Center, and Adjunct Faculty on "Comparative Health Law" of the Health Law and Policy Institute in this same university.

He obtained his PhD. in Public Law at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (2003), thesis written using a comparative law methodology. In the Panthéon-Sorbonne University he studied a degree (DEA - Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies) on Droit public comparé des Etats Européens (1997). He earned his Law Degree (1995) and Master's degree in European Union Law (1996) at the University Complutense of Madrid in Spain. During his Ph.D. he worked for two years as a Parliamentary Assistant to a Member of the European Parliament, dealing at that time with directives and regulations' procedures on the liberalization and free-market competition of the Telecommunications sector in Europe (1999-2001).

López de la Osa Escribano has taught as Professor of Administrative Law and Public Comparative Law at the University Complutense of Madrid Law School, and the University of Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA) in France. He has also been a faculty at the Instituto de Empresa (ie) Business School in Madrid for many years. He teaches for more than 12 years at the Anahuac University in Mexico City, supervising doctoral thesis on Mexican and International Law. He is currently an associate member of the Centre Pau Droit Public at the UPPA in France.

He is a practicing lawyer in Madrid Bar since 1999, having done litigation before civil, criminal and administrative jurisdictions.

López de la Osa Escribano's research focuses on international and comparative law issues and how legal systems interact, especially between the US and Mexico, and in European Union Law. Also, in terms of Tort Law and Health Law, he specializes in doctor-patient legal relationship and medical risk management related to Medical Malpractice Professional Insurance Law, as well as Biotechnology and Life Sciences Law. He has written several comparative law works in the field of Public Law and Health law in France and Spain. His research also centers on human rights and their enforcement, and among others, to protect a major right to healthcare access, nationally and internationally.

Geoffrey A. Hoffman is the Clinical Associate Professor and Faculty Supervisor of the UH Immigration Clinic. He specializes in immigration-related federal court litigation and deportation defense before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), asylum cases, adjustments, and appeals before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).

Prior to joining the Clinic, he practiced immigration law in Miami, Florida at Kurzban Kurzban Weinger & Tetzeli, P.A. Previously, Hoffman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, held the Forrester Fellowship at Tulane Law School where he taught for one year and was a Lecturer at the University of Miami for two years. In addition to his practice and teaching experience, Hoffman was a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Paul V. Gadola, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for a two-year term 1998-2000. He has published numerous articles published in scholarly journals on international law, international human rights, and racial profiling. Hoffman is a member of AILA, a member of the Supreme Court, Michigan and Florida bars, and is admitted to practice in various federal courts of appeals and federal district courts. He holds an A.B. magna cum laude from Columbia University, a J.D. cum laude from Tulane Law School, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

Professor Michael A. Olivas holds the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law and serves as director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston Law Center. Olivas is the leading expert on higher education law in the United States, and is a recognized authority on U.S. immigration law. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Association of University Professors (for which he served as General Counsel), and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. In 2011, he served as president of the Association of American Law Schools. He holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) from the Pontifical College Josephinum, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author or co-author of fourteen books, as well as numerous articles published in scholarly journals on subjects dealing with education law and immigration law. Olivas is fluent in Spanish.

Sandra Guerra Thompson is the University of Houston Law Foundation Professor of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. Thompson has authored numerous articles on criminal law topics such as eyewitness identification and wrongful conviction, immigration crimes, jury discrimination, police interrogations, federal sentencing, and asset forfeiture. In 2009, she was appointed as the representative of Texas public law schools on the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions which was created by the legislature to propose statutory reforms to curb wrongful convictions. She co-edited a new book entitled American Justice in the Age of Innocence, an anthology about wrongful convictions that includes articles written by her seminar students. She served as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office where she practiced both trial and appellate criminal law from 1988-1990.

She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and was appointed to the Board of Advisors for the Institute's sentencing reform project. In 2000, she served as chair of the Criminal Justice Section of the Association of American Law Schools. Thompson holds undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Thompson is fluent in Spanish.

Affiliate Scholars

Affiliate Scholars of the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law participate actively in research and educational projects undertaken by the Center. The inclusion of Affiliate Scholars expands the reach of the Center's programs, and also permits a broad range of viewpoints and expertise in guiding the projects and activities of the Center.

José Ramón Cossío Díaz, a Justice of the Mexican Supreme Court, is one of Mexico's leading jurists. In 2011, he accepted a position with the University of Houston Law Center as Distinguished Jurist in Residence, to collaborate actively on research and educational programs through the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law. Cossío will not receive any honoraria for his work with the Center.

A renowned constitutional law scholar, Cossío was Professor of Constitutional Law and Dean at ITAM Law School in Mexico City before being appointed to a fifteen-year term on the Mexican Supreme Court in 2004. Cossío was born in Mexico City in 1960, and graduated with honors from University of Colima School of Law. In 1988, he received a doctorate, summa cum laude, in Constitutional Law and Political Science from Universidad Complutense in Madrid.

The main focus of Cossío's work has been on constitutional law, although he also has done extensive research and writing in other legal fields. He has authored 19 books and more than 500 articles published in academic journals, law reviews, digests and newspapers. He has received many distinguishing awards and acknowledgments, among them the National Research Prize in the Social Sciences from the Mexican Academy of Sciences in 1998, and the National Science and Arts Award in 2009. The National Academy of Medicine granted him a special recognition in 2010 for his contribution to the strengthening of links between law and medicine. He is a member of distinguished academic, scientific and professional institutes and boards, such as the National Research Network, the American Law Institute, the Mexican Bar Association, the Sciences Advisory Board, the National Institute of Genomic Medicine, and the Mexican Foundation for Health. He also participates in the editing boards of several specialized reviews, both domestic and international. In addition to his judicial duties, Cossío continues to teach Constitutional Law at ITAM University.

Ricardo Colmenter

Ricardo Colmenter is an Affiliate Scholar for International Energy Programs at the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law and the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Center (EENR) at the University of Houston Law Center. He holds a JD from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, a LLM International Intellectual Property, Lund University Sweden and a LLM Intellectual Property & Information Law, University of Houston Law Center.

He is Director of Entra Consulting, an international consulting firm that includes oil and gas industry professionals with valuable international, commercial and regulatory experience. Before founding Entra Consulting, Colmenter was General Counsel for the Western Hemisphere of Weatherford International, a member of Halliburton law department, partner at Johnson and Cato and Legal Director of the Venezuelan Patent and Trademark Office.

Colmenter, a highly respected international energy law expert, has taught as an adjunct professor with the University of Houston's Intellectual Property and Information Law Institute. Colmenter is lead chairman and program director for advance training courses for National Oil Companies' legal departments, such as Pemex (Mexico's state oil company, Petroecuador (Ecuador's state oil company), Ecopetrol (Colombia) and Petrobras (Brazil 's state oil companies) and regulator (CNH and Secretaria de Hidrocarburos del Ecuador). In addition, he has written numerous books and articles regarding international oil transactions, technology transfers in the oil industry and oil and gas international business.

Colmenter's practice centers on transactional law with a strong business view, which involves structuring multi-million dollar energy integral services contracts, joint operational agreements, licenses, production sharing agreements, mergers and acquisitions in the oil industry and sophisticated oil and gas projects. He has more than 15 years of oil and gas international business experience and advises national oil companies, energy regulator and service companies in Latin America. Colmenter was included in the 2015 edition of the Corporate Counsel 100 Latin America (Legal 500), which identifies an array of the most influential and innovative in-house counsel working in the region.

Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez is a Mexican lawyer with expertise in international law. He holds a B.A. in Law and a B.A. in International Relations from ITAM University in Mexico where he achieved the highest honors and several awards for his research on the international law of transboundary hydrocarbon resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Before being admitted to Harvard Law School´s Doctoral Program (S.J.D.), he obtained an LL.M. in International Law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 2011. Before beginning his doctoral program, he was an Associate in an international law firm, where he practiced international investment arbitration with a focus on cases related to hydrocarbons in Latin America. He has presented amicus briefs before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and has advised the Mexican Government on matters of international law. His current lines of research include international adjudication, international investment law, the law of transboundary resources and comparative constitutional law.

Robert E. Lutz

Robert E. Lutz is Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on International Business Transactions Law, International Trade Law, International Litigation and Arbitration, Public International Law, and other international legal topics. He has also taught in the Summer Law Institute of Southwestern, University of New Mexico, and Texas Tech, at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. He was the Editor-in-Chief of THE INTERNATIONAL LAWYER, a co-founder-editor of the ECOLOGY LAW QUARTERLY, is a member of many editorial boards of legal publications, and is the author of numerous articles in leading law and business journals, op-ed pieces, topic-focused books and several textbooks on a large variety of international legal and business subjects. He is also frequently appointed as an arbitrator for international public and private commercial disputes (e.g., NAFTA, WTO, ICDR); and often serves as a consultant to law firms on international legal matters and disputes.

Prof. Lutz is a member of the California Bar and is a former Chair (2001-2) of the Section of International Law (SIL) of the American Bar Association (ABA), the Los Angeles County Bar's International Law Section, and the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) International Law Section. Prof. Lutz recently served on the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20; he previously chaired the ABA's Task Force on International Trade in Legal Services (ITILS) (and continues as a member), was the Chair of SIL's Transnational Legal Practice Committee (5 years) and the California Bar's International Ethics Committee. He participated on SIL's Outsourcing Committee and 20/20's Technology Committee which developed the proposed ABA approach to "outsourcing" and cloud-computing issues. He has served on the Executive Committee of the ABA Center for Human Rights and on the Board of ABA-Africa, and was recently appointed to the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism. For many years he was a member of the U.S. Department of State's Advisory Committee on International Law and is a long-time member of the Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Dispute Resolution to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Prof. Lutz continues to lead the U.S. legal profession's efforts to address the issues of transnational legal practice. He has led legal delegations to foreign countries and organized and chaired a number of "Summits" of legal services leaders focused on Asia, Europe and Latin America and, recently, India, Korea, and the "global" practice of leading firms. Prof. Lutz's memberships in organizations include: American Law Institute (Life Member); American Bar Foundation (Life Member); Pacific Council on International Policy; American Society of International Law; Phi Beta Kappa, Inns of Court; and the Chancery Club (L.A.).

Richard McLaughlin

Richard McLaughlin is an Endowed Chair for Marine Policy and Law at the Harte Research
Institute for Gulf of México Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He received a J.S.D., Doctorate in Law at the University of California at Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law in 1997 and a LL.M., Masters in Marine Law and Policy at the University of Washington School of Law in 1987. He graduated J.D., Cum Laude from Tulane University School of Law (1985) and A.B., Cum Laude at Humboldt State University (1978).

Dr. McLaughlin joined Harte Research Institute in June 2005. As the first of the Endowed Chairs to join the team, his knowledge of marine policy and legal issues including the international law of the sea, ocean energy policies, ocean governance, and marine ecosystem-based management provide an important context for application and integration of his colleagues' scientific findings. Incorporating well-developed public policy into scientific, economic, and social issues offers decision makers an added framework in which to work.

He has been actively involved in a variety of leadership positions in the marine policy field, is a former Fulbright Scholar to Japan and has published over sixty articles and monographs on ocean and coastal policy issues. In the classroom, his instruction has included Admiralty; Coastal Management and Ocean Law; and Environment/Marine Policy. Dr. McLaughlin works with a number of non-profit organizations to support his focus on policy and law. He actively participates in professional conferences as an organizer and speaker. In 2007, he led the Law of The Sea Institute Conference focusing on the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

Embracing the "Harte Model," Dr. McLaughlin serves on the research teams of several current projects including the CAMEO Project and Texas Coastal Program Assessment and Strategies Report, which includes each of the Harte Research Institute disciplines. He has also studied strategic application of policy for the stewardship of the Gulf of Mexico, managing transboundary marine resources, policy issues affecting habitat restoration and conservation, and conflicts, gaps, and needs of ecosystem based management.

Amalia Mena-Mora

Amalia Mena-Mora is a Research Associate at Galer Law Firm, PLLC in Houston Texas and a Lecturer at the University of Houston. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the same academic institution. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on a quantitative analysis of state administrative courts in Mexico. Amalia received her B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from CIDE in Mexico City. During her career, she has been the recipient of various academic honors and awards, including the First Prize for her research on the Mexican Accountability Office awarded by the Mexican Congress, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences fellowship by the University of Houston, the Phi Kappa Phi membership, the Graduate fellowship by the Center for Mexican-American Studies, among others. Her teaching and research agenda focuses on U.S. and Mexican law and courts, comparative court analysis, subnational governments, and accountability using quantitative methodology.

Dr. Alberto Abad Suárez Ávila

Alberto Abad Suárez Ávila is a Full-time Professor-Researcher at Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IIJ-UNAM) in Mexico city. He received his PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from the same institution in 2012. His doctoral research project received the "Caminos de la Justicia en México 1810-1910-2010" prize, awarded by the Mexican Supreme Court, in 2009. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the Universidad de California, Berkeley in 2009 and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck-Institut for Comparative and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany in 2008. In 2007. he received the Ignacio I. Vallarta medal for best student, awarded by School of Law at UNAM. Also, he was the first-place winner of the "Gender and Justice" essay contest, organized by the Mexican Supreme Court and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He is the founding director of the web page www.justiciahable.org, which is dedicated to raising consciousness and observing human rights work in Mexico. He belongs to the Law and Society Association and the Harvard IGLP Network. He speaks Spanish, English, and Portuguese. His research interests are Legal Sociology, Human Rights, Constitutional Courts, Health Law and Criminal Law.

Lydia Tiede is an an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston. She has a Masters degree in Latin American Studies and a PhD in political science both from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to pursuing her PhD she worked as an immigration attorney in San Diego representing asylum seekers and immigrant women. Her current research focuses on studying criminal law reform and the behavior of judges on high courts in Latin America. She also does comparative research on the rule of law in developing countries. Her articles have appeared in Latin American Politics and Society, World Development and the Journal of Empirical Studies. Besides work on Latin America, Dr. Tiede has served as a rule of law liaison in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and most recently completed an empirical analysis of sentencing decisions in this country for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Dr. Tiede teaches courses on public law, judicial politics and comparative judicial systems.

Jeronimo Cortina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He also teaches in University of Houston's Center for Mexican American Studies, and is a Research Associate at the Center for Public Policy. He earned a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, as well as a Masters degrees in Public Administration and Public Policy from the School of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Cortina specializes on survey research, immigration, and quantitative methods. His work has been published in scholarly and policy journals such as the American Politics Research Journal, Foreign Affairs in Spanish, and the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy. His latest books include (with Andrew Gelman, David Park, Boris Shor)"Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do" published by Princeton University Press, "A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences" published by Cambridge University Press (with Andrew Gelman) and "New Perspectives on International Migration and Development" (with Enrique Ochoa-Reza) with Columbia University Press.

Pablo Pinto

Pablo M. Pinto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, and co-editor of the journal Economics & Politics. Pinto holds an M.A. from Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan, and a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego. He also received a Law Degree from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Prior to joining the University of Houston in 2014, Pinto was a member of the faculty of Columbia University. He taught at the Escuela Nacional de Gobierno in his native Argentina, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he founded and directed the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies. He also worked as Chief Counsel for Toyota Argentina. Pinto's areas of expertise are international and comparative political economy, comparative politics, and quantitative methods. His research can be organized thematically around six related areas: the political economy of foreign direct investment, sourcing and the activity of multinational corporations; the causes and consequences of economic integration; the role of ideology, socialization and self-interest in the formation of individual preferences towards globalization; the domestic and international determinants of growth, development fiscal policy and taxation; political representation, turnout and voting; and randomization inference using observational data. Pinto is the author of Partisan Investment in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press) and co-author of Politics and FDI (Michigan University Press). His research has been published in International Organization, Comparative Political Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Economics & Politics, Political Analysis, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, the Review of International Political Economy, edited volumes and other outlets.

Johanna Lutrell

Johanna is a post-doctoral Visiting Scholar on Political Philosophy at the Hobby School of Public Affairs. She had her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oregon in 2013. She was in 2011 a Visiting Graduate Student, at University of Oxford in Politics and International Relations. She had a B.A., from DePaul University, in Philosophy and English in 2006. Her expertise is in Social and Political Philosophy, global poverty, the Capabilities Approach, human rights, urban development under globalization, global feminisms

Work Studies

Moriah Daniels

Moriah Daniels a sophomore attending the University of Houston to earn a B.A. in political science. Moriah is currently an office assistant at the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law, providing assistance with the development of various projects. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering and watching movies.

Nathaniel Roper

Nathaniel Roper is in his fourth year at the University of Houston, studying to receive a B.A. in Finance and Accounting. As a work study for the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law, he is involved in the development of business and administrative strategies for the center. In his free time, Nathaniel enjoys reading and cooking new dishes.

Harsh Shah

Harsh Shah is a junior at the University of Houston, studying to receive a B.A. in Management Information Systems. As a work study for the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law, Harsh assists in developing a business plan and financials.